


sealskinned

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Inanna / The Dean is a water goddess in this one, Podfic Available, Selkie AU, mermaid au, yes I know those are different and yes it's both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-07 23:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11069001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: Carmilla is a selkie stolen from the sea and used by Inanna to hunt down fishermen who owe the sea a debt. That is, until a girl finds her sealskin and starts a chain of events that just might set her free.As a pup, Carmilla had always found the legends of mermaids hilarious. A selkie was a seal who could claim the land when they wanted, not half and half. Half just meant emptied. Empty and empty.Carmilla was hollower than the reef near the human dumping grounds at the coast.





	sealskinned

**Author's Note:**

> "Dammit, this is going to be an epic again, isn't it," I said, attempting to not write an epic and failing. What happened to the days when I could write minifics?

The water was cold, without her coat. What had once been a welcoming home was half-akin to drowning, the cold digging into her still far-too-human bones with brittle knives. Even her tail felt chilled, pinpricks of ice racing down from where mangled seal flesh met a human torso. 

As a pup, Carmilla had always found the legends of mermaids hilarious. A selkie was a seal who could claim the land when they wanted, not half and half. Half just meant emptied. Empty and empty. 

Carmilla was hollower than the reef near the human dumping grounds at the coast. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Carmilla loved waiting. The sea didn’t have a sense of time. It wasn’t bound by the same strangling hours and minutes as the world past the shore. The ocean was old and would only grow more ancient, ignorant of the things lingering in its endless waters. 

Back in the sea, Carmilla didn’t have to worry about racing, clinging seconds. With her sealskin coat smoothed back out over her legs, she could speed and dive and linger all she liked. Fish wouldn’t taste the same to a human tongue, so she left them alone, their flashing bodies swarming silver around her. They weren’t afraid, because they didn’t know what she was. 

Carmilla didn’t know what she was, either. Inanna had scooped her from the waves in a net of dark magic, and Carmilla had had no choice but to shed her skin or the gravity of the air would have crushed her. She hated that the last moments she could recall in the skin she was born in was crushing, crackling fear. 

Hovering, the writhing lines of the net biting into her quickly drying skin… that had been the last time Carmilla had been whole. Her human body had always been but a curiosity, a strange land to visit when she wanted to spend time under the burning sun and stars. Now it was all she had. That, and the empty, half-body Inanna exploited for her purposes. 

The fish scattered under the shadow of a boat, and Carmilla looked up, hovering still in the water. The sea wove soft fingers through her hair and counted down her slender human ribs, a consolation. 

Another shadow, and an anchor plummeted from the ship into the depths. Light wavered down, following the line in woven golden strands. Carmilla followed the light as it retreated from the crushing pressure, her tail barely waving through the water. She drifted close enough her floating hair brushed the bottom of the hull. 

It wasn't a fair trade, flippers for slender useless arms, but Carmilla did appreciate fingers. Her nails, sharp and jagged from stray, broken sealskin magic, scraped against the bottom of the boat. Once. Twice. 

It shook, footsteps rippling the still water over her head. Carmilla darted down, her tail seal-strong, and watched as a human head appeared over the side, warped through the skin of the water. The man's mouth moved, cursing, no doubt. They were far from the shore. Far from any rocks that might have explained the grinding. 

Far, far from help.

When the hull of the boat steadied again, Carmilla let the air in her lungs drift her to rest just under the barnacled wood. She could feel the start of an ache in her useless human chest, but she ignored it. If she paid attention every time her cobbled together body ached, she’d never have survived as long as she had. 

This time, she wasn't as gentle. Her nails left gouges in the wood, the sea eagerly welling up to claim the boots of the man above. 

Carmilla flicked her tail, curling up and around the side of the boat smooth as a deep-sea current. Her head broke the surface with the slightest _pop_ , her dark hair clinging to her shoulders in hangman's knots. She curled one hand up over the side, then the other, her nails taking purchase in the sodden wood.

"What the-“

Carmilla hauled herself up, the rim of the boat wobbling dangerously close to the waves. The man gaped like a dying fish, his skin rotting-white. "Hello," she purred, the air rough against her tongue. She drummed her fingers, one after the other, the wood splintering under her grip. Her tail lashed, a barely tethered thing. "You bear Inanna's debt. It's time to pay."

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Mircalla, dear." Inanna's smile was wide and benevolent as the morning sea, with just as many teeth behind it. "Bring it here."

Carmilla's hand fisted in her ragged half sealskin for a half second, but her unsteady feet lurched forward, smarter than she was. She deposited the skin in Inanna’s hands, keeping her eyes trained down as she backed away. Carmilla had learned not to withhold it a long, long time ago. ”Your debt has been paid in full, Mother."

Inanna unfolded the top of Carmilla's skin, enough to see the dark tufts of hair wrapped within. A hundred human years ago, it would have seemed too like sacrilege to wrap a seeping human head in Carmilla’s relic of the sea… but Inanna taught her lessons well. ”My glittering girl. Always so prompt. William could learn a thing or two from you."

 _Ilialwm_ , Carmilla wanted to say, but she knew Inanna didn't want to hear it. They were children of the sea, and so, she owned them and could name them as she pleased. She inclined her head, and stepped back, awkward, less than half of the grace she held in the water having returned with her to shore. "Thank you."

Inanna smiled another devouring, horizon smile, and let her go, the way a fisherman might. Her hook still curled deep in Carmilla, sharp enough to wound, with a line long to find her wherever she tried to run. Even after all this time, the loss of her sealskin ached. 

Carmilla hurried back out the door of the boathouse, the salt wind blowing in her face. Winter was blowing in, and all the once-seal bones in Carmilla’s body ached to be leaving. It was past time to begin a journey south, where the weather wouldn’t hold such a bite. 

All that made her think of was Inanna’s teeth, double layered like a shark, and Carmilla wrapped her flimsy human made coat a little tighter. The wet from her mission still lingered against her skin, and the mist this area of the shore always stewed in wasn’t making it any easier. 

Carmilla only cast one look back at the boathouse — hunched over in the fog, grey-blue paint peeling like even it couldn’t stand to be near the wicked goddess — but that was long enough of a distraction that she ran into someone else. Hard. 

The girl sprawled out on the sand with all the grace of a starfish suddenly tossed ashore. Her hair was the same colour as the sand, about, or she’d spent enough time on the ragged beach that she’d begun to resemble it. For a moment, Carmilla wondered why she hadn’t tried to catch herself, but that was answered quickly enough as the girl sat up, groaning. There was something cradled in her arms, dark and soft. 

Carmilla’s heart beat a staccato. Something in her, the thing that still remembered what it felt like to hear the underwater world, twitched. “What’s that?”

The girl squinted down at the pile of fur in her hand, then back up at Carmilla. “I was actually just going to track someone down to find out.” She grinned, like it cost her nothing. Unlike Inanna, there was nothing behind it but simple amusement. “I was exploring the caves up the coast — okay, actually, I was lost but that’s not important — and I found this sitting there on a rock ledge? It was obviously put there by someone but I don’t, you know, know what it is.”

That thing nestled against Carmilla’s spine leaped, and she took a step forwards, close enough that her bare feet brushed the girl’s booted ones. “It’s mine.”

The girl levered herself up, careful not to grab onto any of Carmilla. It would have been easier for her, but she had a courtesy that many of the men Carmilla had met in this area had lacked. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes, and it stayed the same sleek sandy colour. “Why’d you put it in a cave? It’s gotta be like, the weirdest, most out of the way place to put… this. What is it?”

Carmilla’s mouth answered before she’d considered if it was a smart idea or not. “Sealskin.” A pause, while they both stared at the folded thing in the girl’s arms. “And I didn’t put it there. Someone stole it from me.”

“That’s…. weird. But okay.” The girl offered out the skin like it was nothing. “Sorry someone stole your sealskin. My name’s Laura, by the way. What’s yours?”

A thousand answers flashed through Carmilla’s mind. Lies. Half-truths. Inanna’s commands. With her past heavy in her hands, Carmilla summoned up the truth. It had been an age since she’d spoken it aloud. “Carmilla.” 

Carmilla swung the skin up and around, settling it around her shoulders. The hood dropped over her head, and Carmilla felt the untamed magic prickle at her skin. She'd been near sure when she saw it, but the magic was nothing but hers. Salt and sure and a comfort against the chill mist. For a second only, she closed her eyes, embracing the soothing pressure of the magic against her long-human skin.

Laura cleared her throat, and Carmilla unwillingly opened her eyes. The girl had gone red, but she hadn’t backed away. “Um,” she said, in the sort of way that made Carmilla think she said that a lot. “You’re either a great optical illusionist or a selkie because I think you have a seal head right now. Just a little. Are you trying to have a seal head? Because that seems like something that would be difficult to do by accident.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Why would anyone cut these in half?” Laura gestured at the skin resting in Carmilla’s lap. She hadn’t tried to touch it again since she handed it over to Carmilla, which was a sensible kindness. Carmilla didn’t know what she’d do if anyone tried to take her skin from her again. “I mean, besides the idiocy of ruining a beautiful thing, what use is sealskin so small?”

Carmilla ran her hands over the underside of the skin, pulling some of the long-embedded dust free. Her hand near seemed to blend with it, even far out from the water. Her soul ached to melt back to herself again, but a head without a tail would only sink her. “Mother- Inanna stole our coats to control us. We cannot run when she still holds such a part of ourselves. We'd be unlikely to get anywhere without our full seal forms anyway."

“The whole seal wife thing, basically,” Laura said. She sounded irritated. If it was on Carmilla's behalf, that was nearly amusing. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cared about her. Selkies were a thing of myths, or worse, a thing to capture and hold. Laura grimaced out at the sea, ostensibly at Inanna. ”Which, by the way, is a super stupid legend. A guy literally kidnaps someone and his first thought is ‘oh yeah she must love me if she isn’t running away’. I mean, I get that apparently selkies are all hauntingly beautiful but come _on_.”

Carmilla quirked an eyebrow. One useful thing about being human, then. “Beautiful, huh?”

Laura flushed. For someone who had grown up human, she had around the same amount of control over her body as Carmilla did — to say, little. Carmilla almost felt reassured by that. She’d never been able to tell if that was a unique failing of her never-meant-to-be-human body. Of course, it could also be a unique failing of Laura. “Don’t try to change the subject! I was asking you about why she cut them in half, and you didn’t give me the whole answer yet.”

Oh. That. Laura had the instincts of a seal, the hunt and the chase and the stubbornness. Carmilla liked that about her. “She cuts our coats in half so we have tails and teeth to hunt her prey, but we can never go home.” Carmilla traced the ragged edge of her coat, where Inanna had torn it in two as she watched. “God, how I always wished I could just swim away.”

Laura hummed, a sound like an engine puttering out to sea. “You can now, right?”

“Not until I get the other half back for my next mission.” There was never a rhyme or reason for the executions. Debts to the water were never concrete things. Carmilla had hunted down men for things as simple as spitting into the sea when Inanna was in the wrong mood. Others had been hunted for seizing sunning selkies. That crime was one only Inanna was permitted to commit. "There isn't just me, in her service. She could easily rely on Mattie or Will for her next mission."

Laura reached out, and Carmilla's system flooded with adrenaline for a split second before her hand landed firmly on Carmilla's. She hasn't even tried to touch the skin. "Well, you have me until then. I get the feeling you've got lots of interesting stories to tell."

"You're inviting a girl you ran into on the beach to live with you? Do you do that often?" Laura had talked about her father, when Carmilla had lapsed into silence, stroking the magic in her lap. It was another kindness she’d offered, free of cost. Carmilla didn’t quite know what to think of that. ”I get the feeling that's not usually recommended in human society.”

Laura scowled out at the sea again, not moving her grip on Carmilla. ”Well, it's not usually recommended to literally cut someone's lifeline in half, either, but that didn't seem to bother your mother."

"She isn't human.” Though she was more human than sea, some days. The sea could never be cruel, only uncaring. That barbarity was uniquely a human trait.

"Yeah," Laura said, and squeezed Carmilla's hand tight. Her hair had fuzzed out around her in the mist, and it glowed like a corona in the light of the setting sun. ”I figured."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Carmilla had been right. The winter stretched by in flurries of snow and time, empty of Inanna's presence. The sea raged at the shore, choked in ice, and Carmilla was half-grateful she didn't have to spend any time in it. That didn’t mean she didn’t miss the water — she always did. This season, though, the longing was tempered by her new company. 

Instead of slowly going landlocked mad, Carmilla spent her time with Laura in the girl’s sealed cabin, only venturing back to town to get food and books. The log walls kept in the heat incredibly well, much better than Carmilla's postage stamp of an apartment back in the town. Laura didn't seem to agree. For all that Carmilla had always complained about her human body being less resistant to the cold than the body she was born in, she seemed to be made of sturdier stuff than the usual human. 

Carmilla was collecting things like that now. Facts, skills. Things that made her hate her soft, pale skin a little less. A year ago, she wouldn’t have thought it possible. A year ago, she wouldn't have thought anything that Laura brought was possible. 

Laura taught her how to use modern writing utensils, and slowly Carmilla's script changed from scratchy, sweeping strokes into something deliberate. In the nights, wrapped in her dormant half-skin and blankets, Carmilla used an entire box of paper scrawling out everything she could remember from her past centuries. 

Laura followed along, hole punching the papers and filing them with the rigour of procrastination. She had her own things to be doing, a course or two from a school on her computer, but the time she spent on that was few and far between. She was far more focused on Carmilla.

Laura _liked_ Carmilla. Beyond any fascination of her strange magic, beyond pestering her with questions about what the ocean looked like from below. Laura liked her for her warm voice and her soft hands and her winding way of talking of reefs and seaweed and different kinds of schools. 

And she still thought Carmilla was beautiful. That had never changed since they met. Carmilla knew Laura was beautiful, too, in the distracted way she strung her words together in endless lines. Laura was beautiful in the way she went red every time Carmilla caught her staring and in every fascinated question she asked about the selkie's life story. 

One night, when the snow was melting off the roof and sometimes into a pan set up in the corner of the cabin, Laura gathered up Carmilla's paper and put on a sock puppet play. Inanna had an ugly snarl of twine for hair; Carmilla shed a paper bag skin. It was preposterous. Seeing it made it feel like a story. A plot, with a beginning, a middle, and a solution. Another beautiful kindness, supplied for nothing more than Carmilla’s laughter. 

That night, Carmilla kissed Laura. It wasn't a surprise, an event, anything that shook their foundations. It made sense, the way nothing else in Carmilla's life had. For the first time, she learned to appreciate her human form on its own merits, not from what it had taken from her. 

She was happy. Laura made her happy. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The day the spring wind came in from the sea smelling of iron and rot instead of salt, Carmilla knew her reprieve was over. With Laura still sleeping in their bed, she slipped out, leaving her skin behind. She was far beyond worrying about its fate after all these months. Carmilla was a story within a story wrapped in an ancient magic. She could move forwards, make her story her own, or she could wait to have her happy ending stolen away. 

It was an easy choice. 

The boathouse was simple to find, having risen back from the mist whole again, whatever magic had kept it invisible during the cold and ice having lifted away. Inanna was already there, her dark hair twisted in a netting of dark magic. She looked carved from the walls, as if, like the ocean hushing through gaps in the wood, she'd never left the place. The goddess didn't turn to look, but she said: “Mircalla.”

Inanna was all the more frightening now that Carmilla was so close to escaping her grip. It always felt like she knew everything, like she could peel away Carmilla’s human skin and read the secrets beneath. But even a god from the sea couldn’t know about everything. The oceans were wide, and Carmilla was careful. “Yes, Mother?”

Inanna turned to face her, her features gaunt, snow frosting along her eyelashes. Carmilla had always suspected something seasonal about her powers, something specific about her jurisdiction that didn’t reach everything the sea owned. “I have your next task for you. You’ll need to be good about it, better than last time.” Her teeth bared, something humans may have called a smile. Carmilla could see nothing but a predator. “More obvious. You see, some _girl_  has stolen one of the sealskins from storage.”

Carmilla’s stomach dropped. Not hers. It couldn't be hers. Not while she was so close-

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want Matska to go without her coat for too long? You know how she enjoys her missions.” Inanna didn’t wait for Carmilla to respond. “The girl lives on a cabin just off the town, alone. I’ll expect to see something in the news about her unfortunate circumstances. Isn't it terrible when people get caught out at sea and ravaged? Tragic, really."

That was when Carmilla realized Inanna was lying. She was talking about Laura. Gentle, funny Laura, who had handed over Carmilla's sealskin without a thought. Observant and oblivious Laura, who Inanna’s servants would drag out to sea and drown as soon as Carmilla was gone. Laura had always wanted to be a part of the waves but not- but not like this. 

Carmilla's skin was safe in Laura’s possession, in her little cabin on the shore. She’d promised not to hang it anywhere near the fire, and Carmilla trusted her. She’d never thought she’d be able to trust that deeply, but Laura… Laura never let her down. 

And even the froth on the sea knew that Laura would never have stolen Mattie’s coat. 

"I know you're acquainted with her, so I want you to make sure make it appropriately painful." Inanna offered Carmilla her tail, the skin limp from disuse. It, too, was frosted with whatever hold the winter still had over Inanna. ”I trust you can figure out the details yourself."

Carmilla took her other half, and inclined her head. Eyes on the floor. Subservient, good, obedient. "I know what I will do."

"Glittering girl," Inanna said, almost fondly. Her hair flickered, the tide caught in its grip. The sea under the boards beneath their feet growled. "Go."

Carmilla tucked her skin around her legs, the magic hooking in under her skin, and dove. 

 

 

* * *

 

  
The cabin, always a retreat from Carmilla’s fate, seemed far more fragile on the other side of Inanna’s hunt. Laura paced the floor, the well-worn boards creaking under her feet. Her hair glowed a corona in the firelight, a mirror of when they had met. “How can we escape? You've told me yourself, she has a dozen other people to send after me. Look, Carm, just go. I’ll be fine.” Her smile was tight, her fists clenched at her sides. The fire roared in the back of her cabin, eating away at the driftwood with hungry gulps. “Take your skins and go."

Carmilla stared at the two halves of her seal-self in her hands, one slick with seawater, the other stiff with dust and long misuse. After all this time, she was finally whole. She could finally go home, see if she could find her pod again. “Laura-“

“ _Go_.” Her voice didn’t brook any argument. It was the same as Laura always was, steadfast and stubborn and awe-striking. Laura’s mug clacked on the table with a slight tremor, betraying the shaking of her hands. 

Carmilla finally looked up from her half coats, catching Laura dead in the eyes. Humans always said that seals looked like they had human eyes, but Carmilla had always thought it was the other way around. Laura had seal eyes, deep and brown and loving. “No.”

Her steps stuttered to a stop. All the air had been let out of her, leaving her small and young. “What?”

“No. I won’t leave you.” Carmilla tucked her still-wet sealskin in her waistband, and knelt to spread the old one out on the floor. It thrummed with magic, the kind that had never been touched by an empty heart. This half-a-coat was full of a youthful Carmilla’s adoration for life. “ _No_.”

The skin flickered beneath her hands, and Carmilla pulled at the edges, stretching and yanking. The spots shifted against the fur, the ragged edge smoothing out. Carmilla pulled at the magic in the skin and herself, pinching close the nose and eyes, tugging at the length. Laura knelt at her side, an electric hand on Carmilla’s shoulder. 

When she finished, sitting back on her heels, the skin was transformed. The dullness had dropped away, leaving only a shimmering glow in its wake. The outline of a head had faded away, leaving only the tapering end of a tail. Her hands still stinging, Carmilla handed the skin to Laura once more. This time, there wasn’t a pang of loss when it left her hand. 

“Carm?" Laura still looked impossibly tiny, like she expected Carmilla to stand and leave, even after all they’d been through. Carmilla hadn’t realized how deep her insecurities ran. Beautiful, lively Laura. How could she ever think wrong of herself?

Instead of an answer, Carmilla turned her attention to her skin, shaking some of the water away. She watched Laura turn the changed half over and over in her hands. “It would have been easy for you to control me once you realized what you were holding, back when we met.”

Laura scoffed. Her fingers were soft on the fur, mapping it. It was nearly an unconscious movement, and a soft smile pulled at Carmilla’s lips. “Yeah, Carm, don’t give me points for that. It’s basic human decency."

“It’s not points, Laura." Carmilla watched her girlfriend, waiting for the magic to snap into place. The skin shimmered. ”That’s not what I think of when I think of you. You’re ridiculous, and easily distracted, and a thousand other things. It matters, though. Everything you are matters.”

Laura’s eyes were wide pools of darkness, a seal’s non-comprehension at a boat bearing down, engine whirring. ”But-“

Carmilla wanted badly to reach out, but she knew better. The magic was beginning to settle in delicate strands, and it wasn’t the time to mess with it. ”What do you think of me first? A poor seal-girl caught onshore?” 

“No, of course not." Laura's hand froze. Her legs, tucked beneath her, blurred into the folds. "Carm. What have you done?"

Now, Carmilla grinned, wild. ”Bought us both a way out."

Laura stared at her tail, curled against the wood floor. Then it blurred away, the skin sliding off and onto the planks. Laura grabbed for Carmilla’s hands, and they both held tight, Laura’s fingers a strangling grip. “But- your life! You got everything you wanted. Don't waste it on me."

Carmilla leaned in, resting her forehead against Laura’s. She could feel each of her breaths, the thrum of her life magic. "Laura, this is a life for both of us. One that will last. You always wanted to understand the water, didn't you? You can come with me."

Laura gaped. Her mouth worked for a second, her mind whirring, and it spat out her least concern, as it always did. Magic could never change the mind. “But won’t I be cold?”

Carmilla laughed, not unkindly, and kissed her, deep and sweet. Their hands rested together on the soft pile of skins. "I'll keep you warm."

“Science says very different things than you do.” Laura cupped a hand on Carmilla’s cheek, and Carmilla could feel the slight scratch of magic-strengthened nails. “Okay. We run." 

A short distance outside, the sea crashed at the sand, an older thing than Inanna, goddess of fishermen and coastal waters. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Sealskinned](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12753837) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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